Game of Thrones Live
Some people seemed distracted by Ed Sheeran popping up to sing on TV’s sword ’n’ sex hit Game of Thrones, but contemporary music has been weaving in and around the HBO program from its inception. The soundtrack has featured Sigur Ros (who made their own cameo in a season four episode), the National (“The Rains of Castamere”), and the Hold Steady (“The Bear and the Maiden Fair”), among others, and several characters have been known to break into song, with or without provocation. Much of the show’s gravitas comes from its rich and rumbling score, with the ability to lull viewers into total immersion and belief in a world that might otherwise seem laughably unreal. Some scenes are all but unimaginable without accompanying music cues like “Light of the Seven,” a rare piano composition heard in the sixth-season finale “Winds of Winter” composed by music supervisor Ramin Djawadi, whose title track for the show has become one of the most covered TV tunes since the theme from Rawhide.
Djawadi’s multimedia classical-pop stage production Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience will kick off next spring with a series of worldwide dates, including Viejas Arena on September 11. Featuring music from all seven seasons, the production sees Djawadi leading an orchestra, choir, and soloists, with what’s described as “a new custom stage design and mesmerizing visuals courtesy of state of the art video technology.” Judging from online clips of the tour’s inaugural run earlier this year, that means multiple screens showing scenes from the program, as well as footage created especially for the tour, comprising everything from Tolkienesque animation to recording studio performance clips, drone-cam flights over exterior show locales, and what appears to be home-movie-style flashbacks (or flash-forwards?) featuring Throne characters in bits of action so far unscreened on television.